Chapter 7
At home they were greeted by a house full of distraught housemates, less one.
Kevin pulled open the front doors when they came up the steps and said, "Hey, that's my coat."
Bob took off the coat and handed it to him with an apology. Elizabeth hung her own coat on the coat tree as Alice came out of the living room. Alice's eyes were red and she held a wadded Kleenex in her hand. She took a deep breath as if she were going to make a dreadful announcement, but what came out was, "What happened to my dress?"
"We had to hide in a cupboard," said Elizabeth. "I'll take it to the cleaners tomorrow."
Dirk appeared in the living room doorway behind Alice. "There's been another break-in."
"Did they wreck the kitchen this time?" asked Bob.
"No, worse! They took Thomas's portrait!" cried Alice.
"Oh no." Elizabeth's head reeled. "When did it happen? Did you call the police?"
"Yes," Alice sniffled. "They've been and gone already. I couldn't reach Joe at all."
"He's working at the party where we were," said Bob. "So were Titania and Becky. But it's not like Titania doesn't have other people to do her dirty work."
"This is what Jennifer meant when she said that Titania would come after us." Elizabeth sat down on the coat covered futon and chewed on her fingernails. If Titania wanted to make another sacrifice to get her sister back from the Devil, then Thomas would be a better choice than Trip. And the minions of evil could hide the portrait anywhere even if it was really big and awkward, she realized. They could have destroyed him already. "We've got to find out where they've taken him."
"And that's not all they took," said Kevin with a pointed look at Dirk.
"And they also took the velvet Elvis," Dirk mumbled.
"We burned that," said Bob. "Back in the garden. I was there, I saw you put it on the fire."
"Well, we burned it, yes, but it didn't actually burn up, so to speak," said Dirk. "So when I went out to clear up the ashes, it was still there. So I brushed off the ashes and hid it up in my room."
"And the fact that it didn't burn up wasn't a clue about it being pure evil?" asked Elizabeth. "I'm surprised Thomas couldn't sense it was in the house. He said it was cursed."
"Well," said Dirk, "I sort of wrapped it in tinfoil just in case Titania and her gang could sense it. I thought it worked."
"It did," said Kevin. "It's your big mouth that didn't work."
"You told Carl!" Alice grabbed Dirk by the shoulders and shook him. "I can't believe you're even speaking to him."
"Me neither," said Kevin. He folded his arms and raised his eyebrows. Dirk winced.
Bob plopped down on the futon beside Elizabeth. "Well, Dirk, if you're on such good terms with Carl, I suppose you know where he's living now."
Dirk detached Alice and set her aside. "No. He just came into the health club one day to talk to Jennifer when she was working out. I saw him then."
Bob said, "If Carl knows, he probably told the others. He isn't necessarily the one who broke in."
Kevin said, "Except the big, muddy boot prints in the kitchen are a dead giveaway. The back door was kicked in too. It had to be somebody strong. Lawyer boy next door wouldn't wear those kind of boots and all your other suspects are girls."
Like grouchy, gay caryatids, Dirk and Kevin propped themselves up at opposite sides of the living room doorway. They glared at each other.
"Yeah, but if they shop at Drastic Steps, then they'll have those humongous Frankenboots," said Alice. "Except that these prints were really big. Those boots would look like clown shoes on anyone under six feet." Alice plopped down on the futon on the other side of Elizabeth and leaned her head on her sister's shoulder.
Elizabeth put an arm around her and checked her aura. The curse was looking a little faded, but then so was Alice's aura. And the person she'd ask what that meant, if anything, was off being kidnapped. She sighed around the lump which rose in her throat. "Miss Price will be by pretty soon. We can at least try to get you uncursed tonight."
"So, how bad is the damage otherwise. They kicked in the back door. Is it still open, or are we going to board it up, or what? " asked Bob.
"It was the lock, smashed clear out of the door and the wood is like all splintered," said Kevin. "We'll have to call someone in to fix it tomorrow. Unless this is something you can do, Bob?"
"It's not that big a deal," said Dirk. "I can do it. We just need to go to the hardware store."
"Oh, you can actually fix stuff?" asked Kevin, looking interested. "I didn't know that."
"Of course I can fix stuff. My dad was one of those 'why buy a new one when you can fix the old one in eight hours and five trips to the hardware store' guys."
A knock sounded on the panels of the front door. Dirk opened it to reveal Miss Price standing there, still in evening dress and with her very interesting handbag held loosely in one hand. Apparently the crates of Egyptian artifacts inside didn't add much to the weight. Either that, or she was a lot stronger than she looked.
"Good evening," she said stepping across the threshold. Her hawk like gaze fell on Elizabeth and Bob. "Which one of you told Joe to ask to see my handbag?"
"He actually asked to see it?" Elizabeth asked.
"Yes, so I showed him my handbag. When all he saw was my old wallet and a dried up lipstick, he said that you all really had him going."
"You talked to Joe?" asked Alice, perking up slightly. "How was he?"
"Hmm? Fine. Are you all congregated here in the hallway on my account?" Miss Price asked.
"We were telling Elizabeth and Bob about the incident," Alice said. She told Miss Price about the break-in and the stolen portrait. She described the Velvis-related part of the theft with particular relish. Dirk squirmed under Miss Price's severe look.
She told him, "Yes, you should be nervous. Let this be a lesson to you. Let's hope it isn't anything more than that."
"What you think they're going to do with Thomas?" Elizabeth asked anxiously.
"Oh, I suppose Titania will just trade him for her sister instead of Trip. Or she might end up having to trade them both. The Devil drives a notoriously hard bargain." Miss Price did not seem particularly upset. When she saw Elizabeth building up a good head of panic, she added, "Mr. Penrose has demonstrated himself to be very resourceful. He certainly has more experience in dealing with the likes of Titania than I do. Besides, they won't do anything to him before the solstice, I'm sure. We have a few days yet to rescue him. Once you figure out who was involved in this break-in, you'll know where to find him."
"Or maybe he could pick up the phone and call and let us know where he is," said Dirk.
"No, the phone lines won't carry his voice. He has … other means of communication available to him. Still, I suppose this means that we are going to have to deal with Jennifer after all. She may be able to tell us more about Titania's plans," said Miss Price.
"We can get it out of her. I can get her address from her health club membership record. It's not that late. We can go by her place when we go to the hardware store," Dirk said with a pointed look at Kevin.
"I don't know," said Miss Price slowly.
"Don't worry," said Dirk. "This is only an information collecting operation. We won't agree to anything and we can't tell her much, except that the house was broken into and we think it was Carl."
"And if she doesn't talk, threaten her with food," Alice piped up. "I have a theory about that."
"What kind of food?" asked Kevin.
"Oh, candy, empty calories, fried stuff." Alice shrugged. "Anything good, I guess."
"That sounds like a trip to Country Style Donuts," said Kevin. "And if we don't need the doughnuts for self-defense, we can have them for breakfast."
Dirk rolled his eyes and grabbed a coat from the coat tree. "For you, anything is a good reason to get doughnuts. You need to overcome this excessive rationalization thing."
"I think I'm being practical," said Kevin.
"Me too," said Alice. "Make sure to get some toasted coconut ones."
Dirk and Kevin left on their mission. Miss Price stood facing the two sisters and Bob, who sat in a row on the futon like three Chinese monkeys. She said, "Alice. Show me this mummy that's got you down."
"What about us?" asked Elizabeth.
"Oh, you two may as well get a bite to eat first. You must be famished since you couldn't eat at that party." Miss Price gave Alice a hand up and allowed herself to be led up to the third floor.
Elizabeth looked at the sorry state of Alice's dress and said, "I'm going to go change first. Meet me in the kitchen?" She hurried up to her room and quickly changed clothes. She pulled on jeans and a sweater, put on her slippers, and then went to the bathroom to brush her hair.
"Oh God," she said when she got a look in the mirror. Her hair was in wild disarray. Bob's efforts to remove the cobwebs, while charming, hadn't done anything else to improve her appearance. She hadn't put on much makeup and had at least been spared a good smearing, but as it was, her eyes looked smudgy against the pallor of her skin. Her stomach growled. And this is what I looked like when I nearly jumped him in the stairwell, she thought. I'm glad I didn't try anything, I would probably have scared him off. Huh. I guess that means I don't want to scare him off. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and washed her face.
With her skin glowing fresh and pink and the rest of her restored to a more normal appearance, she went down to the kitchen. Bob was looking at the back door. Whoever had broken in had applied one very solid kick to the door in the area of the deadbolt. The bolt had been smashed all the way out of the door and there was a splintered hole where the lock had been. Kevin hadn't been kidding about the huge muddy footprints.
"Do you think that they already took pictures of these?" Elizabeth pointed to the footprints.
"Probably, but we should ask before we clean up." Bob had shucked off the suit and dress shirt and replaced them with jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt. He looked like he had tried to put a comb through his hair too. Under the ceiling light, the auburn waves in his hair gleamed with copper.
She gave in to a fit of general admiration while he was busy examining the damage to the door, then immediately felt guilty because Thomas was out somewhere, facing new dangers at the hands of the creature who had cursed him in the first place, or at least at the hands of someone who was working for her. She tore her eyes away from Bob. Her mind wailing Oh, I'm so confused, she walked over to the refrigerator and looked inside.
They threw together a filling meal that met Elizabeth's standards of normalcy: pasta and sauce from a jar. Bob restrained himself for her sake, although he couldn't resist telling her that pasta with grape jelly wasn't such a bad combination. While they ate, they talked about how to fix doors, then threw the dishes in the sink and ran upstairs to where Miss Price and Alice were going over the mummy.
"This is an excellent specimen," Miss Price said when they entered. She had pulled the dust cover off a heavily carved chair upholstered in red velvet and was curled up in the seat with her feet tucked under her. Her stiletto heels were kicked under the chair. With her hair down and in the jewel-toned light from the Tiffany lamp, she looked like a teenager in an inappropriate dress. "It really belongs in the museum, it's certainly better than the one that we had in our collection, since the Department of Antiquities kept the good one." She went back to the notebook she was looking through and said, "This dig was not at all far from where we were. They even had the same little man with the red fez whom one always gets popping up and delivering dire warnings about curses and desecration. So tiresome."
"Do—did you know the archaeologist?" asked Elizabeth.
"Yes, we had this Mr. Sanders coming over for tea constantly. He was one of those miserable bachelor types that eats out of tins when he remembers to eat at all. He did quite a good job with this tomb, however. It's a pity it wasn't considered significant, because it was in very good condition. Grave robbers had penetrated to the outer chamber, but the inner chamber was quite intact. He never had the funds he needed to prepare a proper monograph on the tomb. I believe he had to return to the United States precipitously and then he ended up writing really ghastly adventure novels."
"Does he say anything about the curse?" Alice was sprawled across the bed with a forearm draped over her eyes.
Elizabeth began, "Shouldn't you be a little more worried about Thomas—"
Miss Price cut her off. "I'd be much were worried if it were one of you. And so would the police, for that matter, they would be out looking for you right now. But he's not like you. Remember, the only one of them who can even see him is Titania and she is saving him up for whatever she's going to do on the solstice. The others can't do any more than damage the portrait, which would only make him more angry and obnoxious. If they damage the portrait sufficiently, the curse will be broken and he will be released. Titania has doubtless forbidden them to do that. If the police find the portrait, they will regard it as stolen property and the portrait will end up in an evidence room somewhere. We'd have to figure out how to get the Penrose Trust to have the portrait returned to the house, which is going to be difficult to do unless Thomas has acquainted you with the inner workings of his bizarre legal and financial situation."
"Oh." Elizabeth sat down on the bed beside her sister.
Bob went over to look at the mummy case. "Can we open this?" he asked.
"Absolutely not," said Miss Price. "As near as I can tell from all of these notes, it's only been opened once before. That means the mummy is probably in excellent condition and shouldn't be disturbed until a trained archaeologist can examine it in a proper lab."
"A trained archaeologist like you?" Alice rolled over and inquired.
"I haven't got a lab and I'm a bit out of practice," said Miss Price.
"Thomas said that when we try to break the curse, we should use some of the amulets from her wrappings," Elizabeth said.
Miss Price made a muffled shriek. "You can't manhandle that mummy. She's a high priestess of Isis! It's only by sheer dint of luck that she wasn't destroyed by that idiotic mummy unwrapping party."
"It wasn't lucky for the idiot," Elizabeth pointed out. "She didn't have her mummy party because she died."
"Yes, but it was lucky for the mummy," Miss Price said. She reached for a folder and untied the string that held it closed. "It's really a most amazing set of coincidences that brought this mummy to Richmond in the first place. The Department of Antiquities would have taken her, but then at the end of that season, Mr. Sanders had to leave Egypt suddenly, so he arranged for one of his colleagues to take over the dig. This colleague had a rather flexible attitude towards the laws governing the export of antiquities at the time and smuggled her out of Egypt with some other items. He took her to Paris, where he developed gastroenteritis from consuming bad snails and, between his medical bills and his gambling habit, he got himself into a difficult financial situation. He tried to make his fortune back by cards, but he very foolishly pitted himself against an American called Ruby Jack Odom, which right there should have been a clue. I never had an Odom in one of my classes who wasn't always trying to pull something. This Odom won the mummy and brought it to New York where he tried to sell it to a circus, but one of his more cultured friends gave him a tip and he sold it to our friend from Richmond who brought her home to party."
"All that is in that folder?" Alice looked doubtfully at the scant pages Miss Price flipped through as she spoke.
"I can read between the lines," she said. "We have medical bills and various informal signings over of property, customs papers between Egypt and France, and France and the United States. And one of my cousins had a hand in that poker game."
"Those are just happenings," said Bob. "They'd only be coincidences if getting to Richmond was the object."
"Ah, but it may very well have been." Miss Price leaned forward, eyes bright. "That's why I wanted to review the notes on our own dig. I made a very detailed study of the scroll that was found with that mummy and I think our mummy was associated with Isis as well."
"You think they're trying to get together in the afterlife?" Bob laughed nervously and edged away from the mummy.
"I'd bet on it," said Miss Price. "Just give me another day to work on that scroll."
"This is really interesting," said Alice. "But I'm cursed here. Can't we just get to the breaking of the curse part?"
"You're not really cursed. It's only a little spirit possession from the mummy (who's cursed). I can help you with that temporarily, but we have to do more research before we can break the curse safely."
"You mean safely for the mummy," Alice said.
"Well, yes," Miss Price said stiffly. "There's no point in getting all in a rush and destroying irreplaceable world heritage artifacts. You can wait a day."
Elizabeth said, "Thomas told me that the curse was proximity dependent. We could move the mummy out to the carriage house until you can break the curse. Then the only creatures she can possess will be, like, opossums."
"Oh no, you can't do that," Miss Price said. "The carriage house is not a hospitable environment for a 3000-year-old object. It might get damaged."
"Oh, well all right then, as long as we've got our priorities straight," said Alice, flopping back onto the bed.
Miss Price ignored her and concentrated on the papers.
At a sound from downstairs, Bob wandered out into hall and called down the stairs, "We're up here."
Thumping footsteps on the stairs heralded the arrival of Kevin and Dirk. Kevin was breathing heavily by the time they made it up to the third floor. Dirk was not. He was carrying a white cardboard box stamped in pink with the name and address of their favorite doughnut shop. Kevin flung himself down on a draped chair, raising a cloud of dust that made him cough while Dirk shook his head at him.
"Too many doughnuts, not enough exercise." He opened the box and walked around the room, offering it to each of them. Miss Price waved him away, but Alice grabbed a toasted coconut and Elizabeth took a chocolate glazed. Bob took a buttermilk glazed.
"We have returned triumphant, or at least without total failure," said Dirk. "We talked to Jennifer. She doesn't know where Carl lives, but she wasn't surprised at all about the break-in. She says that she is on the outs with the other horse-people of the Apocalypse, but that she could probably get some information out of Trip."
"Trip told us Titania says it's going to be a surprise," Alice said.
"So much for that, then." Dirk looked slightly deflated.
"She might still find something out," said Elizabeth. "Titania is really mean. She'll probably tell Jennifer just enough to make her really scared, but not so much that she might be able to do something on her own."
"Did you promise her that we'd help?" asked Miss Price.
"No," said Kevin. "We didn't promise anything, we only told her about the break-in. She was all 'I told you so', but we shoved the doughnuts under her nose and she freaked out. Your idea really worked, Alice."
"I knew it," said Alice. "I saw the way she flinched when we tried to give her a cookie. If we have to fight with her, or do a little behavior modification, we can arm ourselves with leftover Halloween candy and throw it at her, or use a slingshot, or something."
"Yeah, it was the raised maple kind that did the trick," said Kevin. "I think those have the most sugar. Are there any left?"
"Only one," said Dirk. "Maybe we should save it for ammunition." He walked over to examine the mummy case. "This thing is amazing, can we open it?" He reached out a sugary hand.
Miss Price cried, "Get away from there. None of you is to touch that mummy. Any actual messing with the mummy will be handled by me and no one else, do you all understand that?"
"Yes, Miss Price," they mumbled.
"There must be some other way to find out where Carl lives," said Bob. "Everybody has information out there somewhere. Even if he isn't listed in the phone book, he has a truck so he must have registration. Alice can hack into the DMV with one modem tied behind her back. She can find out."
"You'd think," said Dirk. "But Carl always was an off-the-grid kind of guy. I mean he had electricity and water and all that, but the accounts were always in other people's names."
"Whose names?" asked Kevin.
"Oh, like his ex-housemates, ex-boyfriends. Previous residents of the apartments. He moved a lot too. Even if we can find an address for him, it might be out of date."
"And when you were going out with him," Kevin started, "This didn't strike you as peculiar? A little unsavory?"
"You know," said Dirk, "there are some discussions that we don't need to have."
"These are discussions that we don't have to have," said Kevin. "I'm easily distracted. Consider: we got all that stuff from the hardware store and rumor has it that you have actual power tools downstairs."
"Oh, stop it."
"C'mon, baby. Fix that door. Do you have a tool belt too? Let's see you in a tool belt."
"Okay, okay, but I don't have a tool belt," said Dirk. He and Kevin went downstairs, Kevin carrying the box of doughnuts.
Miss Price placed a folder of papers in her handbag and reached under her chair to find her shoes. "I'll run along too," she said. "I should be able to make enough headway with that scroll by tomorrow. We can do something about the curse tomorrow evening."
As they all left the mummy's room, Bob closed the door firmly behind them and checked to make sure it was latched. He lingered out in the hallway for a moment, looking hopeful, but when Elizabeth turned to follow Alice and Miss Price downstairs, he wished them good night and went back to his room.
With one hand on the doorknob, Miss Price said, "I almost forgot. We really can't break the curse right now, but I can give you a ward which will lessen the effects of the spirit possession. Close your eyes, Alice."
Alice did so and stood there with an uncertain half smile playing around her lips. Miss Price traced a complicated sign before Alice's face and murmured quietly. Swirls of white fire trailed her fingers and a ward hung glowing in the air. Miss Price examined the ward for a moment before gently pressing it against Alice's forehead where it sent out a band of light on either side to wrap around her head and form a diadem. In the ether, the ward blazed brilliantly. The black swaths of the curse pulled away and gathered in the farthest reaches of Alice's aura.
Miss Price smiled at her handiwork and said, "That should do you for overnight, if not longer. My, but it's certainly nice to do the Work in this house, there is so much power here it's no effort at all."
"Thomas said it was sorcerous power," Elizabeth said.
"It's only dark if you use it that way." Miss Price bid them good night, told them again not to touch the mummy, then left after refusing the loan of a coat from the heap.
Alice flopped down on the coat-covered futon after Miss Price had vanished into the dark. "I can't believe that she's making such a fuss about that mummy. So not fair, I don't want to sleep in the same house with it. Why do you think it's trying to possess me and not you?"
Elizabeth shrugged. "Your bedroom is closer to the mummy's room. If you drew a straight line between the mummy and your bed, then you're definitely closer than I am."
"Yes, but Dirk and Kevin are even closer."
"They're guys. Maybe this mummy only possesses girls. Anyway, you can come sleep in my room of tonight if you think a little extra distance will make a difference."
"Really? Like a pajama party?"
"Yeah, except the theme will be curses from beyond the grave instead of nail polish."
"Cool."
The girls walked back to the kitchen where Kevin was eating doughnuts and watching Dirk fix the door. He screwed a metal plate over the smashed wood and installed a new lock in the plate.
"Is that really going to work?" asked Alice.
"Long enough," said Dirk. "We should get a new door put on and have the doorjamb fixed, but we'll have to wait for our landlord to get back before we do that. Doors are expensive." He tested the lock to make sure the bolt slid in and out, then pushed and pulled on the door to check whether it would stand up to a normal amount of abuse.
Rififi hopped up onto the counter and stalked the doughnut box when he thought no one was watching.
"Better make sure that you put those someplace where he can't get them for overnight," Alice said. "He likes to chew on bread, especially if it's been fried in lard. You should put them in the oven or the microwave."
"It's too bad you can't talk, Rififi," said Kevin, shifting the doughnut box out of the cat's immediate reach. "You probably saw everything."
"Yes, and he helped fight off Becky and them too. Maybe he scratched up whoever broke in. We can find them and if they're scratched then we'll know they did it," Elizabeth said. "Of course, our problem is finding them in the first place, so never mind. I think my brain isn't working anymore." She went upstairs to get ready for bed.
Elizabeth was climbing into bed with a book which was not improving in any way when Alice came into her room, teeth brushed, face washed, and wearing her favorite flannel pajamas. She was also carrying her laptop.
Elizabeth groaned. "You are not going to blog about all this."
"Sure I am," said Alice. "There hasn't been all that much happening lately. Now at least I have something interesting to write about. Maybe some of my readers know how to break curses. You never know." She sat down on the chaise longue and opened the computer. She typed quickly for a while. As the clicking of the keyboard slowed, Elizabeth looked up from her book to find her sister staring into the cold fireplace. Miss Price's protective mark shone on her forehead.
"What's wrong?" asked Elizabeth.
"Oh, I was just thinking," Alice said. "But I can stop now." She closed up her laptop and turned out the overhead light. She crawled over Elizabeth and burrowed down under the covers. "So, tell me about your date."
"I already did," Elizabeth said.
"No, you didn't. You just talked about stuff that happened, not the date part of your date."
"It wasn't a date." Elizabeth set her book on her nightstand and lay back on her pillow. She told Alice about the Egyptian Building, meeting Miss Price, seeing Titania and Becky. When Alice started making impatient noises, she started on the details that Alice was really interested in.
When she finished, Alice asked, "So? Is that all? You kissed him, right?"
"No."
Alice sat bolt upright. "What? You had adventures and you practically snuggled the whole time? And you didn't kiss him? I can't believe we have the same DNA."
"Things kept happening," Elizabeth said. "We didn't have a chance."
"Oh, I can think of about five primo chances without even trying," Alice said. The ward on her forehead blazed like a searchlight.
Elizabeth squinted. "It's too bad you weren't there to give me the signal so I'd know."
Alice flopped onto her pillow. "All is not lost," she announced. "I think he really likes you, so he'll ask you out again. Although considering that he works all the time and when he's not working, he is asleep, those opportunities are not going to come along really, really often. You'll have to be creative."
"Oh God." Elizabeth pulled a pillow over her head.
Alice pulled it off. "Well, you like him too. I mean, I know you find Thomas fascinating and all, and he does have the advantages of being always around and always awake, except I guess when he's out being kidnapped, but you can't even stand next to him without getting frostbite. And then there's that age difference thing. And since you read all the time, the level of consciousness you require from a boyfriend isn't all that high. So Bob is really a better prospect."
"You sound like Mom."
"Oh no, I don't. She doesn't like Bob. She thinks that as soon as he finishes up his residency, or whatever it is, he's going to go back out to the western part of the state and practice in a free clinic or something."
"Has he said that?"
"No. That's something that you might want to try and find out on your next date."
"You think there'll be one?"
"Of course." Alice was definite. "After he broke off a doorknob and then hid in a cabinet with you? You all have history." She elaborated. She even went so far as to name the future offspring of her sister and Bob, although by that point she was just doing it to be annoying. Finally she pulled the coverlet up to her chin and fell asleep.
The ethereal light from Miss Price's ward kept Elizabeth awake. Even when she closed her eyes it was still there. For a while, she stared at the ribs of the canopy over the bed and considered Alice's words of wisdom before dismissing them. She heard Kevin and Dirk come upstairs and go to bed. Rififi came up a short while later, smelling faintly of sugar glazing. He hopped up onto the bed and lay down in the warm furrow between Elizabeth and her sister.
Unable to sleep, especially with Rififi washing his belly vigorously enough to shake the whole bed, Elizabeth closed her eyes and checked out auras. Rififi was a knot of squirming green fire at her elbow. Alice was a brighter pink than earlier, sparkling brightly. The curse shrank away from the blazing ward and curled darkly at her feet.
Elizabeth looked farther afield. Some people in golden yellow walked by on the side street. Dirk and Kevin were merged into a bluish purple knot. Since she was in bed and didn't feel herself in danger of falling, she let herself drift as she had that day at the bookstore and moved further out into the house. Next door, she saw Trip alone, much to her relief. The people who lived upstairs from him glowed red and curled up in opposite ends of the house. Elizabeth wondered if they'd had a fight, or if maybe Titania had hexed them.
Then, not one to stray too far from home, she drifted up a little higher and looked in on Bob. His aura was green, as she had noticed before, but only if you didn't look too closely. The more time she spent looking at auras, the more detail she could pick out. Nobody was a single solid block of color or even a single shade. And so Bob was green like the woods in spring when any one tree is a hundred shades of green. When some shifting in the ether sent to a ripple across his form, his aura flickered and silvered like a wind-tossed tree.
She drifted to a little closer and settled down as much as one could without a natural body to settle on anything. She considered Bob and whether she liked him as opposed to merely liking him. She thought also that if she had to think hard about it, maybe the answer was no. On the other hand, she didn't have to decide right now. None of them was going anywhere. Maybe, she thought, this is just a seasonally and proximity-dependent attraction.
Elizabeth felt an odd blowing sensation. Whatever was silvering Bob's green aura was affecting her own. She held out her arms and watched the blue shimmer to silver and back again. It seemed to be coming from the park out in front of the house. Elizabeth let it push her back to her body and bed.
Alice went sleepwalking again that night.
Elizabeth woke up when Alice's knee pressed into her stomach as her sister crawled across her to get out of bed and enact more strange mummy rituals. Alice took the covers with her as she went and swept Rififi and Elizabeth out of bed before her, both rolled up in four layers of sheets and blankets.
Elizabeth hit the floor with the thrashing cat and his claws separated from her chest by only a sheet. With the wind knocked out of her, she coughed and thrashed around while she tried to free her body from the blankets and the depredations of Rififi.
Alice was moving slowly, walking the bridesmaid's march, but she was halfway to the door before Elizabeth struggled to her feet. Elizabeth staggered over to her sister and threw her arms around her. Alice halted and stood motionless, which was a relief. Elizabeth had been expecting something more theatrical.
The ward on Alice's forehead was faded almost to nothing. The curse swirled upwards through her aura.
Elizabeth let go of her sister with one hand and keeping one arm firmly around Alice's shoulders, she reached up and with her fingertip gently touched the ward. Remembering how Miss Price had shown her how to brighten up the wards they had put on the house back at Halloween, she tried to repeat the process, hoping that it wouldn't make the situation any worse. Gradually, the ward brightened although it felt to Elizabeth like she was trying to force molasses through a straw to get some power back into it.
Slowly the curse retreated back to Alice's feet where it coiled up and sulked. Alice still stood motionless. Elizabeth shook her slightly, but she did not respond. She tried whispering her sister's name, and then repeating herself increasingly loudly. Still, Alice did not wake up.
Since the ward seemed to be doing its job again, Elizabeth considered just leaving her there for the rest of the night, but decided that would be kind of mean.
She pinched Alice's arm.
"Ow! What was that for?" Alice blinked and rubbed her arm. She looked around and noticed that she was not in bed. "Oh."
"Yes," said Elizabeth. "The mummy is at it again. I'm going to have to keep fixing the ward."
Alice touched her forehead. "Why didn't it work?"
"It worked fine, but something is bleeding off the power. This happened last Halloween with the other wards that we put up, although I thought it was the Velvis that was disrupting it. We could ask Thomas if he were here."
Since he wasn't and there was really nothing else to do, the sisters picked up the bedclothes, soothed the angry cat, and went back to bed. The ward wore down again by morning. When Alice started sleepwalking around seven o'clock, they went ahead and got up.
Down in the kitchen they found the doughnut box empty and roughly dismembered. Crumbs and chips of sugar glaze were spread across the floor. Kevin was pulling out a broom and dustpan from the broom closet. When Alice started to scold him he raised his hands defensively. "Hey," he said. "We finished the doughnuts last night. That box was in the trash."
"Really?" Alice looked at the cat who sniffed delicately at Kevin's foot and then flounced away to sit pointedly beside his empty food dish.
After a doughnut-free breakfast and while Alice was still dressing, Elizabeth went up to the third floor. Yesterday Thomas had said he would ready what they needed to break the curse. He might have left out Esmeralda Willoughby's notebook and some of the curse-breaking ingredients.